Mira
Quick Reference Mira is mostly known as the Goddess of Love and Mercy by her worshippers. Her main source of praise is those cast into Miraclos, seeking salvation from their fate. These prayers filled with hatred towards her sister Ora corrupted her into a being of blind rage, destroying everything around her and turning her into the Emissary of Chaos. After being cleansed of the corruption, she has once again become a figure of redemption and mercy with her main responsibilities being watching over those in Miraclos and ushering the souls of the departed. Appearance Unlike her siblings, Mira has gone through an aging process. She appeared before Ora and Gorn in a child's body with curly, chin-length pink hair and round red eyes. Like Ora, she wore a white peplos with golden symbols woven in and on her head was a gold circlet. In her corrupted form, she was the size of multiple buildings stacked on top of each other. Her hair grew to the ends of her feet and became a tangled mess, hanging into her face. The white peplos she'd always worn seemed to have grown with her and became black, and her gold circlet became simple gray stone. After she was cleansed, she kept her long hair (shortening it to the waist) and clothes black to represent her maturation, but her circlet once again became gold. She also returned to a more manageable height, around five feet and four inches. Occasionally, when she wants to be among the humans but remain unseen, she will take the form of a white rabbit with red eyes. The radical group, Black Hares, adopted her rabbit form as their icon, using a black rabbit inside a black ring to represent her corrupted form. Destruction and Absolution Mira came to be when Aran left the world. Her original purpose was to erase old or unused worlds from the plane so that Ora could have more room to create. Of course, these worlds had no life on them, and the ones that did, Mira ushered the souls across the planes. However, she couldn't cross the planes herself. Although she had great power herself in spite of appearing so young, she was jealous of Ora's ability to create life. All Mira could do was destroy. Gorn approached her one day and told her that if she asked, Ora would probably create a world for her to govern herself. Mira ate it up and went and asked Ora right away. And, as promised, she created a world for Mira called Oraclos. Oraclos was originally filled with animals, and Mira quickly grew bored since animals couldn't speak with her. She asked Ora to make the animals human. Ora scolded her, telling her she needed to appreciate all life, but she gave six animals of Mira's choosing the ability to switch between animal and human. However, these new humans still had limited intelligence and so continued to provide poor conversation. Mira again approached Ora and asked her to awaken them, or give them free will. Ora did so, warning Mira that these humans will turn against her now because becoming self-aware meant that they could become both good and bad. The humans did as Ora predicted, and a small resistance group formed, unhappy with the laws Ora imposed on the world. However, they couldn't reach Ora and so attacked Mira instead. This enraged Ora, and she transformed the assailants into hideous beasts to reflect their disgusting actions. Mira was saddened by this event, for she understood why those humans attacked her. They had simply wanted to be free to live by their own power and decisions. She could relate to them, so she begged Ora to return them to their original forms. Unable to say no to her sister, Ora released them from her curse. But, this only fueled the fire of their resistance. In order to compromise with the humans' wishes, Ora and Mira distanced themselves from Oraclos. They chose a human who was popular among the people but still devout to both of them to act as Oraclos' king. So began the reign of Cassius Theron. They built him a castle and told him to unite the land under their names. However, Mira didn't want to just watch, so she followed Cassius around the different regions as he built temples to the Goddesses and won the people's hearts by solving their problems. She became enamored with him because he was everything she wanted to be. She was so charmed by him, in fact, that when he returned to the castle and was attacked by a group of unhappy citizens, she stood in their way and was killed in his place. Ora was so furious that the skies turned black and white lightning tore open the earth beneath them. A giant hole appeared with a gust of wind so strong that it pulled everything that was nearby into its mouth, including Mira's body. And when it was all over, Ora declared that all who broke her laws would end up in Miraclos, the underworld, to be devoured by the hatred and chaos that ruled that place. Then, she left the world. However, a goddess cannot be killed by the hands of mortals. Mira slumbered in the heart of Miraclos, kept alive by the spiteful prayers of those who wished vengeance upon Ora and the ones who lived in the light. These threats and woeful cries of torment corrupted her into something baleful and blinded by rage. Her energy turned malevolent, which then corrupted both the world around her and its inhabitants, mutating them into the monsters that Ora had once cursed them to become. And, when she finally awoke, she had grown into a giant, swollen by the unresolved wishes of her worshippers. She began a mindless rampage, destroying everything in her path and causing her followers to seek to turn her against her sister. When the time finally came for the two Goddesses to meet again, Ora couldn't find it in herself to destroy her sister by her own hand. She had chosen an agent of her will to do it for her and put Mira out of her misery. Mira recognized the soul of Cassius Theron in him and hesitated. The vessel saw this as a sign that she still had a presence of her original self in her, and so did something unexpected. He used Ora's power to activate the power within Mira, the power of destruction, and push the malevolence out of her body. Then, he channeled the chaotic energy into himself, containing it using Ora's laws. The two energies canceled each other out, and Mira was freed from the corruption at the expense of his own body. As a means of thanking him, the Goddesses restored him and all who had been injured in the fight between the two worlds as well as removing the barrier keeping Oraclos from the rest of the overworld. Mira took those remaining from Miraclos back with her. She purified them and the land around them into a reflection of Oraclos and promised that one day, when the wounds of the heart had been healed alongside the physical wounds, she and her sister would work together to unite the lands once again. She appointed Sable Nero as Queen of Miraclos, and watches from afar alongside her sister Ora and brother Gorn. Followers in Enyo During the thousand-year war between Oraclos and Miraclos, there were some Mirans that had escaped Miraclos and lived quietly in Oraclos. The ones who survived without being discovered were those who had features subtle enough to not be detected by the average Oran or had found people caring enough to keep their secret. However, there were also those who somehow, by sheer luck or perhaps divine meddling on account of Aran's leftover energy, found tears in the barrier and managed to escape into the outside world. They mostly sailed either east or south into Enyo or the Wastelands. Those who had gone west were killed by the Sylvans for their close resemblance to the Ens, their sworn enemy. And, those who sailed south were lost in the annals of time. In Enyo, the Mirans were welcomed with the same disinterest Ens showed anything else. That is to say, they weren't killed or turned away, but they weren't helped either. However, it wasn't hard for the Mirans to start a new life there. It was much easier than living in Miraclos where the climate was volatile, the animals were deadly, and the land was prone to blight. Once they had settled in Enyo, they formed a community and managed to build temples to Mira, as the Ens held the same disinterest in religion as they did to people. As long as you had money and you bowed to the Empress, you had worth. In this new land, though, the followers of Mira no longer needed vengeance, and so molded their ideology into one of freedom, following one's own desires, and accepting the end of all things as opposed to causing destruction and mayhem to spark anger and hatred. Symbolism Those who exclusively worship Mira and built temples in her name use the symbol of a circle encompassed by a line curved into the shape of a heart, to show Mira's love and compassion for all. However, those who yet worship her as a symbol of chaos and hatred bear no symbol. They simply use an all-black banner with the symbol of whatever personal crest the leader of their group at the time sewed into it. When Seneca Nero assumed leadership of the Mirans, he used a pale snake with green eyes to resemble himself. The Black Hares used a rabbit with red eyes (black on pink armbands with red eyes and white on black banners with red eyes). The constellation "The Rabbit" appears in the sky in the Oran month of Crus in the season of Santiam. It was named to honor a young Mira's innocence, her gentle nature, and her loving heart. People born under this star are said to carry the same qualities: sensitive and empathetic if a bit gullible. However, they are also said to be mercurial and quick to shed tears. Category:Gods Category:Mythos